Spring-Chores and Work

Spring - Chores and Work

Before walking or riding horseback to school each day, children had to get up early and do their chores. Springtime meant additional chores. Feeding newborn calves, baby pigs, and lambs. Mothers and babies needed additional feed, bedding and protection from cold, wet weather. Farmers also trained young horses in the spring to prepare them for working in a harness, pulling wagons and working in the fields. Farmers planted corn, oats, millet, and barley in the spring.

Hollis Miller said it took a lot of work to manage a farm in the 1920s.

"In the spring you had to be organized and know what piece of ground you were going to put oats on or what piece of ground you was going to put your wheat on or corn on and what piece of ground that you were going to go to alfalfa with then. " -- Hollis Miller (Quicktime required)

Housework and music:

Soon after school was over in May, a farm woman often gathered the children to help with spring house cleaning. They stripped beds of sheets, aired out feather mattresses, and took rugs outside to beat the winter dust out of them.

"Cleaning the house was a big job because we didn't have vacuum sweepers then. We took a broom and you swept that carpet and the dust just flew all over… Sometimes in the evening when we girls were older … we'd sit around the piano, and when dad would come in and get washed up and … he'd come in and sit with us and we'd sing. I think he liked to hear us play. I never was as good at it as my two sisters, but I got by when I was teaching school, to sing with the kids." -- Merna Bailey (Quicktime required)

Baking Bread Ruth Nettleton's mother baked bread about twice a week, and Ruth helped. "We were a big family, eight, and hired men part of the time. So she gave me some dough and I could make bread. …So I would make cinnamon rolls and I'd make biscuits." -- Ruth Nettleton (Quicktime required)

Planting a Garden

Vegetables from the garden fed farm families year-round, so planting and tending the garden were important duties. Farmers planted beans, peas, pumpkins, onions, potatoes, asparagus, carrots, beets, asparagus and squash, as well as strawberries and rhubarb.

Reading from a journal written in 1929, Ruth Nettleton said:

"After breakfast, washed dishes and [cream] separator. Worked in the garden. I picked beans, strawberries, beets, and zucchini. I cut down the hollyhocks that were through blooming, then I canned the beans and cooked the beets. I fixed the strawberries to freeze. So thankful to have an [icebox] at the locker in town to keep frozen food. Then I cooked and strained soap grease … to make soap next week." -- Ruth Nettleton (Quicktime required)

	Do you know how to plant potatoes? Norma Ehlers tells you how. Watch This Video (Quicktime required)

How to Milk a Cow

Like a lot of chores on a farm, milking the cows had to be done each day. Kenneth Jackson remembers what it was like.

"You had to [milk] regularly…you should do it about the same time every morning and again at night. You milked twice a day. Their bags usually filled up with milk…you would just take a hold of them, squeeze and pull down. You usually milked one front one and one back one at the same time and change and milk the other fat one in the back. And after it quits coming easy why you'd take your thumb and finger and keep stripping… till you didn't get milk anymore. But if you only milked a cow half way and went off and left her, why in two or three days she'd be dry. She'd quit producing milk if you didn't take it regularly…We used to sing…old fashioned songs [while milking]. Cats used to line up and you used to squirt milk in the cat's mouth. They were always on hand for a milking cause we fed them. Always had a cat pan and just give them some fresh milk when we fed them. So they were always sitting there…and you could squirt it right into their mouth." -- Kenneth Jackson (Quicktime required)

Tending Chickens

Clyde Ehlers remembers raising baby chickens.

"You had a chicken house. They had incubators, and they'd turn them eggs every other day or something like for how many days it took. You usually had a little stove in there to keep them warm, and you'd turn them loose. You'd have them confined pretty well around this light or this heat, and then they got bigger, why you'd remove some of the surroundings so they'd have a longer area and they grew fast and about three pounds, three or four pounds, why the little roosters [males] they got into the frying pan' cause that was part of your food. And the pullets [females] why you kept them for laying eggs later. So you'd get in on cleaning the chicken house out." -- Clyde Ehlers (Quicktime required)

Spring School

Spring - School

School was important in the life of kids during the spring-- at least until May when school let out. A typical day would begin early in the morning when children did their chores before school. Then they walked or rode horses or bicycles to school. Norma Ehlers said her country school teacher was only 16 years old, just out of high school herself.

"I went to first grade when I was four years old…Most schools were about four or five miles apart… everyone would be within walking distance of that school. And we had a bench up front, and first and second graders learned together. When you were a first grader, you had second grade work, and when you were a second grader you reviewed with the first graders…She'd call us up to the front…for… our reading lessons, our math lessons…I liked to read and I liked history… I read the encyclopedias; that was the only really good set of books we had." -- Norma Ehlers (Quicktime required)

Norma spent eight years in the country school and then went to high school in town. She said it seemed like a long ways from home and was not an easy adjustment.

Children often memorized poems and recited them for school programs. Look up some of these favorite school poems from the 1920s and see if you can memorize the first few lines.

"The Barefoot Boy" by John Greenleaf Whittier
"The Blacksmith," "Hiawatha," "The Arrow and the Song" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"The Wind," "The Cow" by Robert Louis Stevenson
"The Owl and the Pussycat" by Edward Lear
"The Elf and the Doormouse" by Oliver Herford
"What do we Plant when we Plant a Tree" by Henry Abbey

	What did kids play during recess? Pom Pom Pull-Away: You will need a large space and many children to play this game. One side of the space is the starting line; the other side is the goal line. One person is "it" and stands in the middle while all other players stand behind the starting line. The person who is "it" calls out, "Pom Pom Pull-Away," and all other players run to the opposite side. Those tagged by the "it" person become his/her prisoners and must stay in the center. When the "it" person calls again "Pom Pom Pull-Away," the children run back to the starting line, while everyone in the center now helps the "it person tag those trying to run to the other side. The game continues until all children have been caught. Follow the Leader: Any number of people can play. All players line up behind the chosen leader, doing everything the leader does: waving arms, walking on hands, running in circles, climbing trees. Players can choose a new leader after a short time.

Spring

Spring

Spring was a time of new life and preparation. There were newborn calves, lambs, pigs, and horses to care for. To prepare the soil in the spring, farmers burned the corn stalks left from last year's crop, spread manure on the fields as fertilizer, and plowed the soil. Dean Buller said when you plowed with the horses, you could plow about two and a half or three acres a day. Each farm usually had no more than 30 acres of corn.

Today, an average farmer in Nebraska will plant around 150 acres of corn, and the average is even higher in York County. The county had 800 farmers in the year 2000, and ag statistical services recorded around 200,000 acres of corn planted. That puts the average number of acres of corn per farm at 250 acres, a huge increase.

Spring was the time that all this corn and most other crops was (and still is) planted. Spring is also a time of unpredictable weather -- rain, hail, a late snowstorm, strong winds and even a tornado could make planting difficult. Hollis Miller remembers how his family would prepare to plant:

"In those days when they got ready to plant in the spring … they'd cut the cornstalks and then they'd … rake them into a row and set them afire …They had more fires in those days than they do now. And of course if they had a fire that got to your farmstead it was usually final because nobody could get to you fast enough to help you. So we had to be awfully, awfully careful … I can remember helping as a young kid, fight fires in the pastures." -- Hollis Miller (Quicktime required)

Farm Life-Introduction-1920's

Introduction

Children were an important part of many farms. "My land and my home means so much to me. It isn't just a house and it isn't just some dirt out there that we put some seeds in. …It's living; it's a part of me. My grandparents blood, sweat, and tears went into that [land] and my dad's and now my husband's and son's and grandson's…We've stepped on every bit of this land and have put the seed into it on faith that it will grow. And to see it from spring to fall, the crop mature and be harvested and to be used as food or to be put back in the ground as seed to grow again and to feed us all…I just like to be part of that. It just fills my heart…it's so exciting." -- Norma Ehlers (Quicktime required)

Family life on a farm in York County was very different from life in town in the 1920s. On the farm, there was no electricity or indoor plumbing. Farming was hard work, with long days and little money. Work and play revolved around the seasons. Every member of the family had chores -- milking cows, harnessing horses, gathering eggs, cleaning the outhouse, washing clothes, and more. Children usually walked to school, rain or shine, and spent summers helping in the fields. Farm families looked forward to the fun of school programs, trips to town, church gatherings, and other social events. With help from neighbors, 1920s farm families brought in the harvest, battled fires, coped with accidents and illness, and weathered natural disasters such as tornadoes and drought. Spring, summer, fall, and winter brought different chores and social activities for farm families.

	How was life on the farm different from life in cities? "The character and quality of life changed dramatically in Nebraska during the 1920s….The effects of technological change were most obvious in the cities. By the 1920s most small cities had paved streets, municipal electricity and water systems, telephone systems, streetlights, and sewage systems… The homes of most urban Nebraskans had running water and indoor plumbing…Electricity appeared in homes on a grand scale during the 1920s, at first for illumination but by the end of the decade for washing or sewing machines, irons, toasters, mixers, and vacuum cleaners…Refrigerators began to replace iceboxes for short-term food preservation, and electric fans began to cool hot summer days. "Change came more slowly for country people, who would wait another decade or two for electric appliances. Their lives were more profoundly transformed by the gasoline-powered automobile and truck, where effects were especially acute in sparsely populated agricultural states such as Nebraska." From Nebraska: An Illustrated History, by Frederick Luebke, University of Nebraska, 1995, Lincoln, London

WE ARE RAISING MONEY AT OUR CHURCH FOR...

The Masters House, this is a place for men who are trying to "take back charge of their life". Where they may have made some mistakes in their past, but are trying to put God first in their lives and get their life back on track. Brother David {Brown jacket}, Miss Joy his wife and Brother Ted {in wheel chair} run this establishment/facility. They are 3 of the Godliest and nicest people I know and they just want to lead people to the Lord and help them get their feet back on the right road. So please pray for them and if you feel led to donate to their cause then please email me and I will give you the details to send them some money.

Thank you so much for your prayers and any help,

~Christian Country Mama~

How I make my Homemade Laundry Detergent...

I make 10 gallons {in 2-5 gal. buckets} for about $10.00-$12.00. I add "purple" pine-sol, about $4.72 for one-unless I find it on sale for 2 for $4.72 and add a half to whole bottle of $4.00 {generic} essential oil {I like Lavender} then about 1/3 to half a box of borax {$4.00 for a whole box} and about half a box of baking soda {.50 for a whole box} and about 6 bars of soap {usually coast or Irish Spring-about $2.00 for 6 bars}. What I do is grate the soap, then add it all but baking soda into a BIG pot {about a 2 gallon or preferably bigger, with wa ter ALMOST full-give about...well a little more than 1/3 from top and heat on stove till very warm then SLOWLY add the baking soda, cause it WILL foam up. Then after all is added and mixed turn off heat, cool and put into buckets. Pour the mixture into the 2 five gallon buckets and fill the rest with water. This will be THICK when it cools and settles, so you must stir each time before filling your container.The good thing about this is you really are getting 20 gallons, because what you do is put into and gallon container-HALF WAY and then fill the rest with water, each time you refill your container! If this sounds complicated email me and I will explain it more! So think about it 20 gallons of detergent for $10.00, about .50 cents a gallon. Not to bad huh?!!!
Let me know if anyone tries this and what they think of it!!! I love it, not to mention the money we are saving. I also make our own fabric softener, dish detergent and deodorant and I also started making my own perfume!!! Not to mention I make my grandson's fresh homemade baby food, with fresh fruits and vegetables.

Have a great night and I hope this helps some of y'all. Just let me know if you want to know about the other things I make.

~Christian Country Mama~

A Great Giveaway...

Please go to Bryant Family Farm and enter their great giveaway, hurry though contest ends tomorrow!

~Christian Country Mama~

Wishing Everyone A Merry Christmas!

I hope you all had a very nice and safe Christmas and I pray we all have a wonderful New Year coming ahead. May we all serve the Lord Jesus with more diligence and desire and to try to reach at least one soul for Christ everyday.

~Christian Country Mama~